Context is important. When it's not done with the intention to harass it isn't harassment. This wasn't done for fun, they're doing it because they want to try and encourage others to make these people into social outcasts. It's textbook cult behaviour and exactly the same thing religious types do to people who dump their religion.

Context is important. When it's not done with the intention to harass it isn't harassment. This wasn't done for fun, they're doing it because they want to try and encourage others to make these people into social outcasts. It's textbook cult behaviour and exactly the same thing religious types do to people who dump their religion.

Context is important...

So, you're wrong about what harassment is. That is part of the context of your argument.

Harassment is characterized by repetitive behavior. Also, the person doing the harassment can have no intention of upsetting or threatening you in any way for their behavior to be harassment.

If I call you once (and even if I say something extremely insulting) and never talk to you or see you again, that is not harassment.

If I call you 100 times in a single day, you answer the phone after call 2 and tell me not to call you again, whether my intention is to bother you or to just get you to talk to me because I love you, it's harassment.

This act of people posting a picture of someone that they know and a snarky comment is no different than a tweet.

If one of your friends who hates fast food tweets a picture of you eating McDonald's and says "@Javik is eating something disgusting, what an idiot! #corporatemeat", is that person harassing you?

But, let's say you're right anyways, and see what that means:

So, what are you saying?!? Because context is important...

1) Are you saying that this group of vegan extremists are shaming and "harassing" all ex-vegans that anyone wants to post to their site in order to shame the relatively non-existent few ex-members of this one particular extremist group?

2) Are you saying that all vegans are in a "cult-like" group, and this is an extremist group that is trying to shame and harass all ex-vegans back into the "cult-like" group?

Let's assume the first:

That doesn't make sense... (If this is what you're saying, please do explain how that makes sense).

Let's assume the second:

Let's put this argument in context:

If being in a group that harasses ex-members is enough for you to say that the group is "cult-like", then you're willing to attach a connotation to any group, such as that they are like a cult ("cult-like"), based upon a single generic behavior that is prone to many non-related groups. If you're willing to take a generic behavior that applies to one group, and say that another group is like that group because they share that one generic behavior, you end up with situations that are ridiculous and absurd, just like this, and just like these:

A football team is a "homosexual-like" group because they get on top of each other and smack each other on the butt when they do a good job.

Conspiracy theorists are a "presidential-like" group because they're both interested in current events and the state of the country.

Police are "nazi-like" because they both wear uniforms and are strict.

A "textbook" definition of a cult:

A Primer on Cults and Ideologically Extremist Groups

This primer explores the question "What is a cult?" and attempts to explain some of these behaviors that may often seem incomprehensible.

What are cults, and how do they work? A useful definition of a cult builds on the work of Lifton, Singer, Arendt and others and encompasses the following five points:

• The group is led by a charismatic and authoritarian leader
• It has a closed, steeply hierarchical inner structure
• The group adheres to an exclusive or total belief system
• Processes of coercive persuasion (or brainwashing) are used to retain followers
• Followers are exploited

The inner structure of a cult is closed, and steeply hierarchical. At the top sits the leader whose every whim must be obeyed. Followers must renounce ties to outsiders - unless they can be recruited or used in some way. Yet within the group itself, belying the stereotype of close "community" that exists within cults, followers are, in important ways, isolated from each other, allowed to communicate only within the narrow confines of the group's belief system.

Can you come up with at least three known similarities between this group and a definition of a cult? Even if you can, does that mean that they are "cult-like"?

Based upon the definition above, many types of groups have at least three characteristics of a cult, but I still think it would be absurd to genuinely believe that they are actually literally like a cult.

The Military
A Football Team
A Baseball Team
A Company
A Religion

So much for being "ethical", it's just another cult.

If you'd simply said that you were kidding, and didn't really mean it literally, like jokingly calling someone who's strict a Nazi, I would've totally understood.

Continuing to argue the point, you've shown that you actually believe that they are a cult, just like you said.

It's like when someone says, "Boy, our boss is a Nazi". Someone else laughs and says, "He's not a Nazi", and the other person starts arguing that because their boss is strict he is literally like a Nazi.

It's really one of the most absurd and ridiculous arguments I've ever heard or read, and I'm sort of embarrassed to be a participant . It's one of those times when what the other person is saying is so absurd you're sure they must be joking, but they aren't, and then you never take them seriously again.

The joke is on you pal, it takes a real fool to look at harassment and act as if it's somehow being done to serve a greater purpose. Just a stab in the dark here but are you perchance a vegan or vegetarian?

The joke is on you pal, it takes a real fool to look at harassment and act as if it's somehow being done to serve a greater purpose. Just a stab in the dark here but are you perchance a vegan or vegetarian?

It takes a real fool... Good choice of words, pal

How do you define a fool?

Why take the time to respond if you can't be bothered to defend your opinion? That was a long post I made, and you couldn't find one point to make on it?

If you're not a fool, it should have been nothing to throw together the facts and a rational argument to defend your opinion, but you can't. Instead you simply go on being wrong, and assuming you're right even though you can't defend your opinions, and the facts say otherwise.

Being unable to defend your own opinions, and still holding them with merit, is a pretty good definition of a fool

What greater purpose is that? Are you just making something up?

You don't understand what harassment is, even after you've read the legal and common definition. You don't understand what a cult is, even after you've read a "textbook" definition. Your sure handed stab in the dark missed.

By the way, I'm not vegan. I'm actually about to make a hamburger in a little bit to have with dinner. So, I'm not privy to their secret meetings on how to shame us disgusting and immoral flesh eaters into giving our lives to Veganism .

I will take a stab in the dark and assume that you don't understand the bigotry associated with your logic of using pejoratives to describe groups based upon generic behaviours.

Labeling groups with pejoratives based upon generic behaviors in the way you did is bigotry.

I am not a fan of bigotry, and do not need to belong to the group to be offended by ignorant, malicious, and bigoted views.

Catherine Wessinger (Loyola University New Orleans) has stated that the word "cult" represents just as much prejudice and antagonism as racial slurs or derogatory words for women and homosexuals.[48] She has argued that it is important for people to become aware of the bigotry conveyed by the word, drawing attention to the way it dehumanises the group's members and their children.[48] Labeling a group as subhuman, she says, becomes a justification for violence against it.[48]

At the same time, she adds, labeling a group a "cult" makes people feel safe, because the "violence associated with religion is split off from conventional religions, projected onto others, and imagined to involve only aberrant groups."[48] This fails to take into account that child abuse, sexual abuse, financial extortion and warfare have also been committed by believers of mainstream religions, but the pejorative "cult" stereotype makes it easier to avoid confronting this uncomfortable fact.[48]

The differences between vegans as a general groups and these vegas is clear. The same with the difference between being part of a movement and showing CULT LIKE behavior.

The key words here are cult LIKE.

It should be clear, you're right, just as what harassment is. I've learned that it is amazing how much someone will pretend to understand, or pretend to not understand, in order to not be wrong (or to believe that they are right).

It's nonsense. It's like pretending to not understand the difference between an actual cult, and a cult fan base of a film or television show.

Then, someone argues that Rocky Horror Picture Show fans literally are like an actual cult because they watch the film and perform group rituals during it

It takes being absurd to another level. It's interesting to hear the actual logic behind that kind of absurdity. Just like here though, you often never get to, because there is none.

Should we make a website exposing all the omnivore traitors? People who used to eat plants and animals then suddenly considered themselves too good to eat animals. How can they turn their back on those beakless chickens? The least they could do is eat their carcass so their suffering was not in vain.